Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: interestingness#415

This Great Horned Owlet was not one of the "usual" ones, but one of three found at a different park in the city. They may have all fledged by now, as this photo was taken on 15 May 2013, and at least two of the owlets had "branched" - only maybe a foot along one of the branches close to the nest. I think that is Mom you can partly see in the background. This was the first time I had seen any of these owlets.

Very occasionally, I will come across a mushroom that has been pulled, presumably by someone who is studying fungi. This was the case the other week, when I came across a display of several of these large, amazingly beautiful Russula emetica (also called "The Sickener", as it is poisonous) in Brown-Lowery Provincial Park. Only this one had been pulled, and I made the most of it : ) Though I have now pulled a handful of mushrooms, I would still find it impossible to make myself pull most of the beautiful ones I see, especially if there is only one glorious individual. I always feel that someone else might come along the trail after me and might notice it and thoroughly enjoy seeing it. Sigh ... I guess most of the fungi I see will go unidentified, without a photo of the underside. Or maybe I will eventually change - Ron W, you surely did everything you could to convince me that pulling mushrooms is OK and in fact essential to possibly getting an ID : ) By the way, this is the forest that has bears, cougars, and moose (have only seen a moose so far, and I hope it stays that way!). Actually, two cougars were seen in there just recently, along with their kill. Just looking at this photo creeps me out - I find it extremely uncomfortable and freaky in there.

Grrr... all my descriptions for the four photos uploaded today have completely disappeared! Oops, I think I know what happened. So, here we go again. This is a close-up view of one of the beautiful Orchids that were growing in the Conservatory at the Calgary Zoo.

A very elegant bird, the American Avocet tends to be far off in the distance. This time, luck was on our side, and we got a closer view.